Saturdays don't get much respect anymore | GOOD MORNING COLUMN

Saturdays aren't what they used to be, and I'm wondering just how did this once all-important day become something of the Rodney Dangerfield of the calendar?

Certainly, it doesn't seem to get much respect anymore.

The post office keeps toying with the idea of eliminating Saturday mail delivery as though I lose my ability to read on Friday afternoons.

I and other country folks depend on the postal service to deliver this newspaper and other subscription pieces to our doorsteps. News is sort of like milk, Saturday's isn't nearly so fresh if it isn't delivered until Monday.

That's bad enough, but what really got me to thinking about this is the bank down home recently started closing on Saturdays. After more than a century of being open six days a week, the bank, as lawyers like to say, arbitrarily and capriciously started closing on Saturdays.

That means if you need to go to the bank, you've got to do it Monday through Friday during hours when most of us are either hard at work or commuting to and from our jobs.

The Saturday closing isn't as bad as it once would have been because a good many folks no longer get a real paycheck. Companies such as this one every couple of weeks tell the bank to increase the balance in my checking account, and I must add that's usually not a minute too soon.

This concept of electronic dollars intrigues me, and I've been thinking about starting to pay my bills in a similar manner — you know just call the bank where, say, the utility company does its business, and tell them to increase their account by whatever I owe. Seems to me it ought to work.

Still, though, I used to like to mosey into the bank occasionally on Saturdays and tell them I'd take care of overdrafts just as soon as the Courier & Press sent down a fresh batch of them electronic dollars.

Saturdays used to be pretty special. That was when about mid-morning we, and most everyone I knew, would go to town. In our family, Mom would go to the grocery store and to do other shopping while Dad and I would go to the pool room. I'd sit up on one of the high benches that lined the walls while he shot pool with other men.

Used to be you could learn a lot about people and life in general sitting up on the benches in a pool room.

It's unfortunate for today's youths that most towns these days no longer have pool rooms. Even if they did, given the trend, they'd be closed on Saturdays.